Could flexible working hurt women’s careers? That’s the view of the Bank of England’s Catherine Mann, who fears it could open ‘two tracks’ and widen the ‘gender gap’.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Scottish Widows tells us that because of lower pay and longer life expectancies young women ‘must save an extra £185,000 to reach the same retirement income as men’.
This week, we will inevitably hear the baseless assertion that women are working ‘for free’ until the end of December.
This Thursday, we’ll also hear the Fawcett Society make its annual fuss over ‘Equal Pay Day‘. This, of course, is the day when women are, allegedly, no longer earning relative to men because of the gender pay gap. Even though equal pay and the gender pay gap are two separate issues – the first a matter of law, the second mostly meaningless data that explains little about working life in Britain today – we’ll still be informed that women will, until the end of the year, effectively be ‘working for free’.
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